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The Chevrolet Volt becomes a political football

January 24, 2012

GM CEO Dan Akerson drove a Chevrolet Volt to field questions from a House committee.

We huddled around our computers to watch what has become a nauseating reoccurrence in Washington: the politicizing of a nonevent in the hopes that it will embarrass The Other Guys. Honestly, folks, this stuff is getting way too old, and that holds true for both parties.

Wednesday's targets included green technology, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and General Motors. Righteous indignation came from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who questioned whether General Motors and NHTSA were somehow conspiring to keep quiet the less-than-lethal fires that befell the Chevrolet Volt hybrid-electric car.

GM CEO Dan Akerson was summoned to Capitol Hill--like a schoolboy to the principal's office--to answer charges that NHTSA slow-walked the Volt investigation after one reportedly caught on fire three weeks after a laboratory-supervised crash test.

Issa led the charge. He convinced himself, despite evidence to the contrary, that GM and NHTSA hid the Volt battery defect to avoid embarrassment for GM's green-halo car, a car that came from "Government Motors"--nudge nudge, wink wink.

Contrary to Issa's thinking were some facts that, well, contradicted his point of view. First, NHTSA initiated "the unusual step of opening a safety-defect investigation in the absence of data from real-world incidents." Read that again slowly: NHTSA began an investigation though it had no real-world data with which to do so. That is unheard of behavior. (Could it be argued that to undertake an investigation was a knee-jerk reaction to "want to do the right thing and not be seen as showing favor to GM?" Hmmm.) Second, Chevrolet took the unprecedented step of offering to buy back Volts from owners concerned about battery safety and even offered loaner cars to Volt drivers while the investigation was ongoing.

Finally, NHTSA cleared the Volt of battery problems. NHTSA officials say they believe Volts or any other EVs pose no greater risk of fire than do gasoline-powered vehicles.

See, where is this political folly--not an inexpensive folly, either--getting us? Nowhere fast.

Today's dog-and-pony show has nothing to do with a Volt battery cover-up. In Issa's eyes, GM's crime was taking government bailout money to use it to be successful, becoming the world's largest automaker a few short years later (a recipe this self-made multimillionaire has sort of used himself. Go read Issa's Wikipedia page top to bottom.).

By the way, trashing GM and the Volt also robs President Barack Obama and green-energy fans of a win. This is an election year, after all.

Message to politicians: Your childlike behavior is numbing, and it's beginning to piss off all of America. The greatest problem with this particular witch hunt is the message it sends to innovators in the United States, not to mention competitors abroad, when the crown jewel of a resurgent General Motors is attacked merely as a political salvo.

Akerson summed it up well: "We did not engineer the Volt to be a punching bag, but that's what it's become."

A five-star safety-rated punching bag, in fact.

Dutch Mandel
- Dutch Mandel, Autoweek’s editorial director and associate publisher, has been with the company for 29 years. A second-generation car journo, he grew up with exotic cars in the garage. Among his many feats is a chef for a racing team and automotive consultant on the Pixar movie CARS and CARS 2.
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